Sunday, March 8, 2009

Yesterday a group of us got together with the sole purpose of trying some of the heroic dungeons harder achievements. We had Gee our Paladin tank, Gabi our Death Knight tank, Stesha for healing juices and Earynn and I rounded out the group with our damaging skills. We worked at this for hours and only acquired four achievements but they weren't simple ones!

Azjol-Nerub

We started in Azjol-Nerub. It was the one dungeon none of had any of the achievements for. First on the list was Watch Him Die. This was a little tricky. We had to kill the big ugly bug guy (Krik'thir the Gatewatcher) without killing his Watchers. The skirmishers, warriors and shadowcasters could die, just not the Watchers. This was why we built our group with two tanks.

Our original plan consisted of Gee handling the groups one at a time and killing the smaller adds. Then Gee would keep the Watchers busy while Gabi tanked Krik'thir for us. It didn't work too well. The Watchers were continuously wrapping us in webbing or blinding us making the boss kill impossible.

Plan B was to have Gee just grab all the monsters in the room and run away while Gabi grabbed Krik'thir for us. Again another failure as Gee died too soon for us to finish the boss off but we were very close!

The winning plan was to combine these two ideas. Gee pulled the first two groups one at a time letting us kill the smaller spider things. He then snagged the third group and ran with the 3 Watchers and just 2 adds chasing him. Gabi got Krik'thir's attention and with the help of Earynn's heroism ability we burned him down. We all then promptly died from the returning watch of evil wrapping and blinding Watchers but the achievement was ours!

Next on the list was Hadronox Denied. This one was much more straight forward. We just had to catch the giant spider before it reached the front of the room and webbed the gates closed. Simple right? Well no there were the three Crushers in the way as well as the endless stream of little bug creatures.

Our first attempt we were very nervous about Hadronox getting up front before we were able to catch him. We had Gee grab the first and second Crusher and when dead start moving with the third crusher towards where Hadronox would be arriving to at. This didn't prove to work so well. With the crusher plus the tons of little bug creatures it wasn't long before we were all smashed into paste. We did realize that Hadronox is not rushing to the front so we abandoned this plan.

Second attempt was to kill all the Crushers in turn and then position Gee to take care of Hadronox and Gabi was tossing his Death and Decay to distract all the little spiders. Again everyone started to go squish but we had the fire power to finish off Hadronox before we all went down. Achievement received ... and then we all died from the adds. It seems to be a trend with us.

Last in Azjol-Nerub was Gotta Go! Pretty straight forward. Kill Anub'arak within 4 minutes. The achievement in game says 2 minutes. This has been upped to 4 minutes in 3.0.8 but the text in the game hasn't been corrected.

The trick to this one is how quickly you can kill the adds when Anub'arak burrows so he will come back up quicker. Luckily high damage happens to be a specialty of me and my friends. We got this achievement on our first try and didn't even die!

Gundrak

With Azjol-Nerub completed we decided that our group's set up was also ideal for Moorabi in Gundrak with the number of interrupts and silences we had. Basically everyone but Stesha had a way to stop the Mammoth transformation. We ran out to Gundrak to try for Less-Rabi.

We spent two hours alone attempting this achievement. This one is no joke. It is not just skill but a good smattering of luck to get this done. Good thing is that he's very easy to run from if he does transform so you can reset and try him again. We had a death every now and then but for the most part we were just able to rush out and try again. I can't tell you how many resets we had attempting this.

We also learned that Gabi's Strangulate skill did not stop the transformation. He could however use Mind Freeze without a problem.

Moorabi casts his transform ability every 10 seconds until at 50%. Then he casts transform every 5 seconds with the cast times getting quicker and quicker. They come so fast that you basically have to anticipate them and cast your spell before you even saw the cast bar to beat the lag.

Our problem came about transformation #4. We were doing alright having Earynn interrupt first, Gabi second, Earynn third and I was given this horrible fourth interrupt with my counterspell. I started getting the interrupt down but it was difficult and touchy since I was trying to anticipate and catch the cast before I saw it. The problem was when I did successfully stop the fourth transformation we would be stopped by the fifth.

We finally abandoned this plan and sent Earynn to Ironforge to respec into Reverberation that would bring his Earth Shock from 6 to 5 seconds. We changed our order to Gabi first, me second and then Earynn just spamming his earthshock every time it was available to take care of the five second transforms.

We were all about at our wits end at this point but after a few practices with Earynn's new talented spell we did it. Oh it was sweet sweet relief!

After this victory we were spent. Hours of working on these achievements was tiring work! We were all just so happy to have Less-rabi finished we disbanded to allow us to relax and get some food.

3 comments:

Heya, found your blog from MendPet's link list and think it looks pretty cool. You interested in a link exchange?

Also, Gratz on the achievments. I'm hopeless when it comes to things like that (far too much energy involved :p). Do the achievement points actually help any, or is it just a novilty thing for the most part?

Greetings and well met! I am Desdarii, a Draenei Mage from the Blackwater Raiders Realm (RP). This is where I describe my adventures through Azeroth with my husband Gabi and post the stories of my past. You are most welcome here. Please, sit a while and enjoy my tales.